


Is This Okay?

by IneffableDoll



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Asexuality, Denial, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff, Holding Hands, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, PTSD Elements, Recovery, Repression, Romance, Self-Esteem Issues, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Touching, but for Crowley this time!, it's all pretty sweet you guys, kinda? in essence anyway, so much comfort oh my, some existentialism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24707455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableDoll/pseuds/IneffableDoll
Summary: Crowley hadn’t even tried to touch Aziraphale since – oh, around the time the Arrangement started. He’d attempted to shake Aziraphale hand, seal it like a business agreement, and the angel had refused to with a half offended, half apologetic look.And every time after that, the accidental brushes, the few moments of tolerating social norms, Aziraphale pulled away as though electrified, as though Crowley’s touch could taint him. And Crowley didn’t want to do that, so he let him, and he never said anything, and he pretended it didn’t ache to feel like something repulsive.-------After Armageddon, in the wake of freedom, Aziraphale takes easily to the casual affection they are now allowed to express. After millennia of repression, Crowley does not.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 54
Kudos: 342
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens





	Is This Okay?

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of an expansion of an idea I used in my fic “The Years Belie (We Lived a Lie)” wherein Crowley has some trouble getting used to being allowed to touch Aziraphale after millennia of repression. This take is more angsty than in that one, but still mostly soft and all about learning to trust your own truth, basically. Hope you like.  
> P.S. Finally managed to write a Crowley POV without him swearing constantly, lol  
> P.P.S. This fic has pushed my word count of published Good Omens fics to over 100,000! FUCK that's a lot (hey, I didn't say I'D stopped swearing). Thanks for the support, it inspires me to keep writing and having fun getting involved in this lovely community!

It was an innocuous day. There’d been seven of them thus far, since, and neither had heard from anyone Above nor Below. Seven days of disconnect, no harshly-worded messages or interruptions on the radio, only a world that was quite determinedly not ablaze with scalding seas of blood and the wrath of ethereal and infernal warzones.

They were alone.

And on each of those seven days, Crowley came to the bookshop and treated Aziraphale to someplace nice in London or even a bit beyond, new places and old places, and then they went back ho- _to the bookshop,_ where they drank, and they talked, and they tried to get used to the idea of being around each other.

Rather, being _allowed_ to be around each other.

Seven days of freedom and all Crowley wanted to do with it was spend it with his friend. He couldn’t bring himself to do otherwise, in search of some form of external solidification or comfort that reality was as it seemed. Aziraphale didn’t seem to mind. Maybe he needed it, too.

Crowley didn’t know what he had expected prior, if they really managed to stop Armageddon and loose their chains. For something to change, for nothing to change, for everything to change. If he should _do_ something to change. He was plagued by a constant nervous energy, thrumming and buzzing, a need to keep himself busy to prove that he and the world were here. They were safe.

He was perhaps, maybe, a _little bit_ afraid, even after everything. It was a bit like being invested in the world and seeing it paid back in due, but still unsure if the return was sound and permanent. Nothing felt permanent, his existence like a book that was meant to end a chapter and a half ago but continued writing itself. The world still turned, and Aziraphale was still on it – that should be enough. But he still felt so sure that some sort of _change_ should have occurred, that this new normal they discovered should not have been quite so easy and painless, Armageddon nothing more than a brief but dismal moment along an infinite cosmic timeline. Marching onward.

And so it was that, on the seventh day, the day of rest, Crowley and Aziraphale sat side by side in St. James’ Park and Aziraphale took his hand, and the world changed just a little.

Crowley’s whole body jolted, and he immediately swiveled his head to look. The grip was not tight, but firm and confident enough to ensure that it would hold. Their fingers weren’t intertwined, but palms kissed, and Crowley felt heat bloom up from his neck as he was yanked from his own existentialism – how human.

“U-Um,” he stammered. “Angel?”

Aziraphale looked at him, a bit sheepish but mostly pleased, and didn’t deflect like Crowley expected – like an eternity of evidence might suggest. “I know, rather,” he said with a slight, self-deprecating chuckle. “It’s only that I’ve always wanted to. And normally, I could give myself a million reasons why I oughtn’t. But…” He glanced down at their hands, then to Crowley’s golden eyes, shielded by shades. “I realized there weren’t any excuses now.”

Crowley stared at him, flabbergasted and gobsmacked and dumbfounded and addlepated and a bunch of other synonyms one might choose to articulate the shocking sensation of being clocked in the jaw with unforeseen affection from the love of one’s life.

It’s not like he didn’t know Aziraphale loved him. Satan Below, he was as subtle as Crowley. But he’d never _shown_ it, not like this. What if someone _saw?_

When Crowley didn’t respond, Aziraphale’s expression weakened and he gently pulled his hand away, leaving Crowley’s as cold as if he were truly cold-blooded. “Ah, I misread that, didn’t I.”

Only the sheer magnitude of the angel’s disappointed and downcast eyes could have dragged Crowley from his stupor. “No, no, no, angel. Angel, you’re fine,” he said. He took a deep breath and snatched up Aziraphale’s hand.

A bolt of anxiety struck through him with a resounding, high-pitched tone buzzing in his ears. His shoulders stiffened; toes curled in his boots. He knew he wasn’t supposed to do this. He could never reach out. He was supposed to wait, always just wait, and let the angel initiate contact, let him determine when it was safe. Otherwise, he could ruin everything, their tenuous friendship, and the easy comfort ripped from him-

Aziraphale looked at their hands in surprise, and a smile exploded across his face, Crowley’s chest unknotting at the sight as quickly as it tied itself up.

“Oh, good,” Aziraphale said with audible relief. “Er, not _good_ – four-letter words. I remember. But I am pleased, nonetheless.”

Crowley let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was withholding and concentrated on not grasping too tightly, nor too loosely. It was fine. This was fine. Aziraphale wanted this. He’d initiated it, and he hadn’t ruined anything.

For a while, they sat in silence. Aziraphale seemed content to hold his hand and watch the birds and pedestrians, tossing out a small blessing now and again. Crowley took the silence to think.

Why had he reacted like that? It was illogical, but that moment when he had reached out – it was like a live wire, zinging through him with…apprehension? No, not strong enough. It was a bone-deep fear, this explosion of emotions, this horrible sensation of destroying the things that mattered. Like he’d done something horrendous, irreversible, and damning.

He sank down lower in his seat.

Crowley wasn’t stupid.

He knew why.

He’d spent millennia avoiding just this, avoiding damaging this tentative _something_ they had, going at Aziraphale’s pace, and never speaking first if he could help it. Always available, always there, and never demanding, never taking.

And now Aziraphale had perhaps caught up, and he realized he wasn’t ready at all.

Those seven days turned to seven more, and the weeks ambled on.

As the high of their freedom slightly eased, Crowley became less manic in his need to take Aziraphale places, to reaffirm that Aziraphale still wanted to see him and that the world would let them. The sense of safety was almost threatening in its drive for complacency, and Crowley’s tried his best not to fight it.

Aziraphale, it seemed, didn’t have to.

“It’s most wonderful,” the angel had mused one evening after a modern reproduction of _Macbeth_ that he’d hated but nonetheless watched, enraptured, and ragged on for the entire evening. “Now that we’re free from Heaven and Hell, we can do so much that we couldn’t before, and we can do them together! I’m not interested in pretending I want otherwise.”

Crowley loved it. He reveled in it. And he didn’t understand it.

It was like that day in the park had cracked something open in Aziraphale, torn away his walls. Like all he’d needed was that moment of crystalline clarity, and he understood exactly what freedom meant for him. He committed to it as firmly as he had his faith in Heaven; there was none of the trademark anxiety that Crowley had come to assume was part of Aziraphale’s personality. As it turned out, it was simply a byproduct of his – occupation, as it were.

Crowley loved that. He loved that Aziraphale could bask in his freedom so openly, his honesty. And he didn’t understand it.

As the weeks went on into months, Aziraphale initiated more touches between them. Never anything much. Linking hands over a linen tablecloth. Shoulders pressed together in theatre seats. A fleeting hug at the end of the day that never lasted quite long enough.

Crowley never, ever initiated. He couldn’t. Every time they touched, he loved it, and he reveled in it, but he could not touch back, and he understood enough about himself to know why.

What to do about it was another matter.

“You know,” Aziraphale began gently amidst a bookshop nightfall of checkers and something non-alcoholic. Neither were big on the December holidays – though Crowley missed the old Solstice parties sometimes, they really knew how to do liquor – but the angel had insisted on buying eggnog at the local café. Crowley was pretending to hate it on the principle of it being a sweet creamy drink with shaved nutmeg and demons don’t like sweet creamy drinks with shaved nutmeg. Especially when not spiked.

He took a sip, glancing over to his companion. Aziraphale sat next to him on the sofa nowadays and the demon was still getting used to that.

“You know,” Aziraphale repeated, looking over to Crowley, “you can touch me if you want to.”

Crowley coughed as eggnog flooded his windpipe.

After a moment, during which Aziraphale fretted and thumped his back unhelpfully, Crowley recovered enough to clear his throat and say roughly, “What was that?”

“I said that you’re free to touch me,” Aziraphale repeated, blinking in confusion.

“Right, okay.” Crowley’s eggnog suddenly had a bit of rum, or maybe his rum had a little eggnog. He took a swig. “And _why_ did you say that, exactly?” He knew why but he didn’t want to have to _say it._

“Only because you never do,” Aziraphale pointed out, “but you don’t object to touch. I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve been touching you a bit more lately-“

“-Obviously I’ve noticed-“

“-And you seem to like it.” Aziraphale stared at Crowley as though he had asked a question and was waiting for a reply. Aziraphale was a big fan of never asking questions while actually asking many. Unspoken words were their thing, after all.

“…I do,” Crowley agreed after a moment. He pushed himself into the corner of the sofa, facing Aziraphale and subconsciously increasing the distance between them with folded arms. “I’m not touch-averse if that’s what you’re asking.” He knew it wasn’t. Aziraphale knew he knew it wasn’t.

“Will you talk to me, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, slightly irate. “I’m just trying to understand what’s happening here.” His expression softened. “I knew we don’t really talk about this thing between us, but we’ve never had the freedom to until now, and I’d quite like to.” He glanced away sheepishly, then turned back, almost pleading. “Is that okay?”

Crowley smacked his lips and sat up a little straighter. He didn’t want to, and it wasn’t okay, primarily because if he tried to explain this, he’d almost certainly bullocks it up and Aziraphale would probably try to blame himself. But no evasive lies were forthcoming.

When Crowley failed to answer, Aziraphale added gently, “It’s alright if we can’t right now. I don’t mean to be demanding of you.”

Crowley took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, blinking away the buzzing thoughts. Vulnerability was not his thing, but maybe…Satan, God, Someone, or _anyone,_ Aziraphale looked so hopeful, and yeah, maybe they needed to talk about this.

“Yes, okay, fine,” Crowley mumbled. He wouldn’t be happy about it, though.

The angel’s eyebrows furrowed. “Not if you’re not comfortable with it. I only thought-“

“I said it’s fine, Aziraphale,” he interrupted firmly. The angel still looked unsure, so he softened his expression. “It’s alright, angel. I don’t mind.”

Aziraphale nodded. “If you’re quite certain, dear.”

“I am.”

“Then, can you try and tell me why you don’t touch me?”

“Right. So,” he began, immediately faltering as he tried to place his words. They really weren’t his forte. “The thing is. Er. Crap, okay, I have no idea how to say this.”

“Just say it. I promise I won’t be upset or anything,” Aziraphale assured. “Do you not want to touch me? I know it’s such a human thing, but we tend to like human things and-“

“I do! A lot! That’s just it.” Crowley leaned forward, quick to banish the notion. “I’ve wanted to touch you for a long time. Holding hands and stuff.” He did blush a bit at that.

Aziraphale smiled indulgently, clearly delighted, and encouraging him to continue.

“The problem is,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully, “my…I can’t…I _can’t_ touch you.”

Aziraphale’s expression veered into confusion again. “Whatever do you mean? You clearly can. We’ve known for a long time that my being an angel doesn’t hurt you or we’d have never survived the social customs prior to the 1950s.”

“No, not that.” Crowley rubbed his temples. “The thing is that I’ve wanted to touch you for so long, and I haven’t been able to. Allowed to.”

Aziraphale nodded at that. “I suspect it hasn’t been as long for me as for you, but yes, that’s true. However, we’re free now, so you don’t have to worry about being allowed to.”

Crowley looked at him, baffled and awed and frustrated all in one. He gave a small groan. “I don’t know how you do it!”

“Do what?”

“You live without fear, so quickly and easily,” Crowley exclaimed. He continued more quietly, so grippingly honest it hurt to say aloud, “my mind _knows_ that I can touch you, and that you won’t rebuff me, and we’re safe to, now, but my body is still so…afraid, or whatever.”

Aziraphale let out a low breath as understanding dawned in him. It looked like it hurt him, too. “You’re afraid to touch me because you’ve never been allowed to, so you worry every time that I’ll push you away again.”

Crowley cringed at the words, at how monotone the angel said them. But he nodded because it was true. “Because of Heaven, yeah. I know why you did it. I’m not blaming you, okay, angel? I just…” He didn’t know what to say.

“Crowley.”

“Mmm.”

“Look at me.”

He did.

“Take off your sunglasses?”

He did that, too.

“Take my hand.”

Crowley hesitated.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said so softly, heartbreakingly. His eyes were unbelievably sad and sympathetic, Crowley felt something in him crack. “I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

Crowley shook his head. “It’s not you, it’s me. And I came up with that phrase so you should know how much it pains me to say it.”

Aziraphale didn’t laugh, just pouted further. “Oh, my dear. I rejected you for _so many years_ whenever you tried to show me you cared. You brought me presents and did nice things – yes, nice – but whenever you tried to touch me, I…I couldn’t.” He looked up, perhaps out of habit, looking regretful. “It felt like it was too far. I couldn’t imagine that Heaven wouldn’t notice I’d been touched a demon, and that Hell would certainly know if you’d been touched by an angel. And then we’d be found out, and we’d both be in danger. Even more danger than we already were. So, I forced that distance…”

Crowley couldn’t deny that it was true. He hadn’t even tried to touch Aziraphale since – oh, around the time the Arrangement started. He’d attempted to shake Aziraphale hand, seal it like a business agreement, and the angel had refused to with a half offended, half apologetic look.

And every time after that, the accidental brushes, the few moments of tolerating social norms, Aziraphale pulled away as though electrified, as though Crowley’s touch could taint him. And Crowley didn’t want to do that, so he let him, and he never said anything, and he pretended it didn’t ache to feel like something repulsive.

He knew Aziraphale didn’t see him that way. He knew why that was how it had to be. That didn’t make it hurt less.

Aziraphale took Crowley’s silence for what it was and reached out himself, taking Crowley’s hand in his. Gentle, undemanding, always. Present. “However long it takes you,” he intoned gently.

“What?” Crowley looked up from where he’d been glaring at his boots.

“I will wait,” Aziraphale reiterated as some determination sparked in his eyes. “You waited for me for so long. I will wait for you.”

Crowley gaped at him. No words escaped his open mouth.

“Further,” he continued. “I will tell you this: you can touch me, and I will never pull away. You can hold my hand, you can hug me, and you can kiss me if you’re ever up for it. You are completely welcome, and you have my consent for it, now and always, and if I ever feel otherwise, I will tell you – but I cannot imagine I ever will. I will not reject you, not anymore.”

Crowley was dangerously close to tears, and without his sunglasses, he knew the angel could see that. How undemonic. He took a deep breath.

“And,” Aziraphale added, because _there was more?,_ “I will tell you that again, however many times you need to hear it.”

Crowley nodded jerkily. Then, keeping eye contact, he slowly brought their clasped hands up to his face and gently pressed Aziraphale’s knuckles to his cheek. It felt wrong, but he wanted to show that he understood, that he would try. He wanted to try. He didn’t want to just be a demon and an angel, he wanted to be whatever they chose to be. Choices. He’d always been big on choices, since the Beginning.

He was allowed to make choices now.

Crowley felt Aziraphale’s warm skin brushed against his like a flame, and like ice down his spine, like the best wine and choking on air. Aziraphale’s answering smile was everything, and for a moment, Crowley really managed to believe him, even if he couldn’t see how it could possibly last.

Crowley later lay awake in his bed, overthinking how easily he could have ruined everything with that touch, and knowing how stupid it was to be doing so.

He knew, in his head, that it was irrational to think that. Aziraphale had reached out, repeatedly. He had told him with words that Crowley could touch him – could _kiss him_ if he wanted, and oh did he want – but it was like all his instincts were at war with his logic. In the same internal monologue, he could repeat that Aziraphale wanted to be touched by Crowley, that he was okay with it, and that Heaven and Hell would take this away from him, anyway.

He knew Aziraphale wanted this. Heaven, he’d said as much multiple times. Crowley wasn’t stupid. He may have been dumb enough to fall in love with a bastard angel who thought dolphins mated out of water, but he still had a functioning brain. A brain that told him that Aziraphale loved him, because of course he did, and he’d known that for centuries even if he didn’t show it. _Until now, until now._

He chuckled mirthlessly into the dark room. Aziraphale was going too fast for him, perhaps. He was going too slow for himself. Something.

How long would Aziraphale really wait, though?

Forever. He knew that. He knew Aziraphale loved him, and cared for him, and _respected_ him and his issues, and would wait for eternity. He would stay by Crowley’s side even if the demon never reached out first, and that was a comfort. Nonetheless, the persistent ache in his back of his head reminded him that the angel was notoriously impatient. That he would abandon Crowley when he saw that the demon was too much of a mess to love.

He knew it was a lie. He knew that.

His brain tortured him with it, anyway.

And come springtime, they went on a picnic.

It was Aziraphale’s idea, both on a night fifty years past and some days prior, when the angel suddenly suggested that they plan one. Crowley agreed, obviously, and declared he would take care of it because that was what he did. He loved and he served, pathetic sap that he was.

Crowley always understood the significance of the picnic, even back when Aziraphale first mentioned it. Restaurants and pubs were indoors and there was a veil of potential to deny that it was a social call. They met up for lunches and dinners to make _plans_. To plot, to trade jobs, and to manage their Arrangement. Meeting on a bench in a park, they could have been strangers who merely happened to sit by each other and made light conversation out of the corners of their lips. Crowley could pop by the bookshop with the understanding that it was business, that it was Crowley trying to be a bother, that he was merely here, in a private place, to drain Aziraphale’s liquor.

A picnic was public. Anyone could see them. A picnic was preplanned; there was a basket and a blanket and their favorites foods. A picnic could not be dropped in an instant, abandoned to hide their fraternization were an Archangel to materialize at their elbows. A picnic was not something business partners did, or strangers did.

It was something friends did.

Crowley had known, back in 1967, that they would never have that picnic, because that would be Aziraphale admitting, not to himself, not even to Crowley, but to the world that they were friends. That Aziraphale was friends with Crowley and was not ashamed of it, that the world was a safe place where they could do that.

The world would never be like that, and now, they were going on a picnic.

So, yes, Crowley understood the significance of the picnic. But the rebellious part of his brain still didn’t understand how Aziraphale felt safe to do this now. He didn’t ask.

It was cloudy overhead, but a nice breeze kept the day comfortable, and they set up under a tree in Regent’s Park. They didn’t need the shade, but Crowley was pretty sure you were supposed to have picnics under trees. He fluffed out the blanket he’d materialized, a cliché red-and-white checkered pattern, which he pulled from a wicker basket with a back hinge. It opened to reveal a feast of grapes, gourmet cheeses, bread rolls, blueberry muffins, triangle sandwiches, and a bottle of Bordeaux.

Crowley had never been on a picnic, but he got the idea.

Aziraphale stood back in mild surprise as Crowley set up, apparently too shocked to assist. By the time Crowley was done, he turned to see Aziraphale chuckling.

“What? Is something off? Did I miss something?” Crowley surveyed the spread before them. It looked exactly like what he’d seen when he’d googled pictures of picnics.

“No, not at all, my dear,” Aziraphale said fondly. “It looks positively picturesque! You’ve outdone yourself.”

Crowley tried not to look too pleased. “Eh. It’s whatever.”

“Hardly.” Aziraphale’s eyes twinkled as he sat on the edge of the blanket and patted the space beside him, where Crowley immediately folded himself as he finished emptying the basket and collecting the two glasses.

“It’s not exactly fancy,” Crowley admitted as he handed Aziraphale a glass and unstopped the bottle with a satisfying _pop_. “Most picnics aren’t. Usually simpler foods, ya know? Crepes would be a mess to haul around in a basket.”

“It’s lovely, Crowley,” Aziraphale reassured while Crowley poured the Bordeaux. “I love it. It feels just out of a romance novel, in fact.”

Crowley ducked his head and shoved three grapes in his mouth, leaning the bottle against the basket and unable to respond to the insinuation – however accurate. Images flashed through his mind of himself as a handsome dark suitor and Aziraphale in Victorian-era women’s garb, all the ruffles and petticoats and bustles, before shaking the visual away.

Instead of words, as he chewed, he leaned over enough to bump his shoulder into Aziraphale before immediately pulling back. It was deliberate but minimal, enough to set his heart off, even as he chanted inwardly that it was fine.

The bright smile Aziraphale gave him for it would power a thousand solar panels.

Afterward, with food consumed, wine glasses set aside, and shoes kicked off somewhere in the grass, they found themselves lying side by side, staring up into the cloudy sky and watching it dim with shimmering dusk and gossamer twists of grey.

He took a deep breath and brushed his fingers against the angel’s wrist, a barely-there touch. He made himself keep them there, even as his body braced itself for something he couldn’t name.

Aziraphale turned his head to face him, smiling so softly. Crowley’s heart stopped completely. “Thank you,” he whispered, making no move to increase their touch, content. The message was clear. This was Crowley’s moment.

For anyone else, this would’ve been the perfect time to lean in, for lips to meet lips, for the romanticism of the day to swell into that one burst of outward affection that romance novels and films love so desperately. They could have held each other and whispered promises of eternity, accompanied by physical reassurances and tender murmurs against cheeks.

But they weren’t there yet. Crowley wasn’t there yet. Aziraphale was happy to go at Crowley’s pace, and Crowley had to believe that, internalize that.

The moment was already perfect, anyway. That small touch, that small smile, those small words. Crowley breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, and smiled back. His heart beat again.

Just then, he felt the first few droplets of rain hit his cheek and his temple, one trailing down his neck, as it started to rain. Crowley laughed at the poetic irony, turning up to face the tears of the Heavens.

They stood and packed up swiftly. Crowley picked up the basket when they were done, and Aziraphale wordlessly took his other arm, lifting a white umbrella over their heads that hadn’t been there before.

Crowley grinned. He’d always liked rain.

They were free, he reminded himself. No one was looking. And if he pressed and held Aziraphale’s tucked hand against his ribs as they walked, then that was between him and the hand.

The history of their touches expanded from there, and Crowley cataloged all of them as he had been for years. It was nearly overwhelming, the surge of affection, and how willingly Aziraphale expressed it, even as he grew accustomed to and comfortable with this newfound freedom. Aziraphale, like Crowley, had been holding back for so, so long, and all Crowley had to do was sit back and let it happen.

And occasionally, he reached back.

He remembered all of those, too, obsessively. He revisited them, evaluated them to be sure he hadn’t overstepped. To make sure the angel’s eyes really had glittered when Crowley took the angel’s arm in turn, that the angel had beamed at him when Crowley held his hand, that the angel leaned into him when Crowley tossed his arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders on the sofa.

Bit by bit, they grew used to it. Crowley got used to it slowly, slower than he’d ever been in his life. Slower than he’d forced himself to be, for Aziraphale. And still, the angel was there, and he said it again whenever Crowley needed: _I will wait, I love being with you, I will not reject you_. Sometimes Crowley asked, sometimes it was unprompted, and every time, his heart swelled.

It was slow, and for the first time, that was completely okay. It was okay.

One evening, when Crowley lingered in the doorway before heading back to his flat after a lovely evening at some gaudy Italian place where Crowley kept changing the music to Greek and Spanish just to irritate the customers (the staff was grateful for the reprieve from the monotony), Crowley surprised them both by initiating a hug.

They shared a hug after their outings more often than not, always by Aziraphale’s prompting. It was nice and good and all those four-letter words Crowley was learning to endure, but definitely still grumbling about. However, in the evening light with the angel’s hair aglow by the streetlamps of a mysteriously quiet Soho, Crowley moved forward, like his body had switched gears and gone in a contrasting direction, and was pulled toward Aziraphale as opposing magnets, opposing forces that clasped in a firm bond.

Aziraphale made a sound of surprise but immediately returned the embrace before Crowley could get any ideas about moving away. Their hugs were usually short, a few seconds, a whispered, “goodnight, angel,” and “goodnight, Crowley,” before releasing each other.

Tonight, the angel would not let go, and that was the moment that Crowley finally understood just how badly Aziraphale wanted Crowley to touch him. Just how much he had wanted and hoped, just like Crowley had.

He wasn’t tolerating, wasn’t “okay” with it. He _wanted_ it.

Crowley pulled him tighter for a moment, pressing his face into the angel’s shoulder, before moving back enough to see Aziraphale’s face.

He believed him.

Aziraphale loved him, and reveled in him, and Crowley understood it. He understood why.

He understood that Aziraphale was truly never going to pull away again.

“Goodnight, angel,” he whispered. For once, he was glad he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses. Let the world see how he blazed, the inferno of his soul alight. Cast him in orange hues and watch the sun burn out before his love will, and the skies crumble without him. He loved, and he loved, and he was never letting go of this.

“Goodnight, my dear,” Aziraphale replied, much like he had said “to the world’ over champagne, as though he meant three different words entirely. He, too, was a star in the galaxy of existence, and they existed together, irrevocably, unapologetically.

They continued.

The world continued to change, just a little, bit by bit.

They went out together as always, but they started calling them “dates” instead of “outings” or “social calls.” Crowley especially liked saying, “Want to go out on a date with me on Friday?” and Aziraphale, like a giddy teenager with his first boyfriend, would reply, “I’d love to go on a date with you! What did you have in mind?”

After a while, they stopped correcting when humans assumed they were together because they realized there was nothing to correct. They called each other “my partner” if someone asked, which they occasionally did. They called each other “my partner” if no one asked, which they often didn’t since it was obvious to those with at least one functioning sense how besotted the quirky bookkeeper and retired rockstar were.

Perhaps it should have felt like they were waiting for something. Like they were building up to an explosive moment, to a dramatic reveal. Waiting for an evening or a morning or an afternoon when they bore their hearts and their emotions peaked and they made speeches about their devotion and they made out until they remembered they didn’t need oxygen then kept going.

Perhaps it could have happened like that, and maybe it would be like that in some nebulous future occurrence, but it wasn’t that way now. They’d always been good at saying things without words. They didn’t need to say anything, because they already knew, and had known. Maybe one day they would, but they didn’t need it then. There was nothing new to say that hadn’t been said in millennia of gestures and months of touches.

So, no, they weren’t waiting for anything.

Nonetheless, there came a moment, one muggy August afternoon in a podunk town at a dingy farmer’s market, that brought on a new form of touch henceforth unexplored. Indeed, if they had been waiting for something, perhaps this would have quantified. As it was, it was merely a moment in an eternal scheme, a brief and subtle alteration of their colliding orbits.

But it was no less special for it.

When Aziraphale heard wind of an “oh, it’s just adorable-looking in the paper” farmer’s market a few hours’ drive from London, he’d unleashed the puppy dog eyes on his favorite owner of a vintage Bentley, and the demon had ceded to the excursion with hardly any grumbling (he would have ceded without them, anyway). Approximately half the expected time later, Aziraphale puttered about at the most absurdly _cute_ local market, less like a kid in a candy store and more like a ravenous Hellhound with a disposable demon in its line of sight. He spoke to every person there, inspecting locally produced cherries and zucchinis and hemming over home-printed tees and sniffing revolting candles named “Eternal Evergreen” and making eyes until Crowley bought him the sunflower-frosted biscuit at the pastry stand.

Crowley’s job was to hold Aziraphale’s hand and carry a bag of purchases – heavier by the minute – in the other and be dragged from stall to stall, pretending he was upset about it. Also, to hiss at the flower stands. Those tulips should be ashamed of themselves.

“Come on, angel,” Crowley groaned after a few hours. “We’ve been here for ages and I’m going to _discorporate_ of boredom.”

“Oh, hush,” Aziraphale responded, just as he had the last four times Crowley had said this.

“Aziraphale, I am suffering. You do realize it’s the middle of summer and I’m in _all black_. I’m going to _melt.”_

“Woe is you,” Aziraphale said with a roll of the eyes, the subtle twitch of the corner of his mouth a betrayal of his amusement. They both knew he could miracle the heat away, or just not wear black.

“Seriously, angel, I’m actually begging you,” he moaned petulantly. “The market will still be on for hours. Surely, we can go do literally anything else for a bit? Preferably indoors?”

Aziraphale pouted again. “There’s only a few more stands I wanted to look at…”

“Yeah, and then you’ll want to look at every stall between them.” Crowley released Aziraphale’s hand so he could snap the reusable bags of produce and confectionaries and crafted home goods into the Bentley’s boot. “Too heavy,” Crowley complained, rotating his shoulder while making a pained expression as though their corporations could actually get sore.

Aziraphale let out an aggrieved sigh. “Oh, alright, then. Just for a bit.”

“Excellent.” Crowley leaned over and pecked Aziraphale on the cheek. “Let’s go. There’s a little café a couple of streets down that looked like the kind of disgustingly _quaint_ place you’d like.” It took him a few steps to realize Aziraphale wasn’t following him.

“Angel?” He turned back to see the angel frozen in the middle of the path as people milled about at the various stands, an expression of pure shock etched across his face. Slowly, oh so slowly, he raised a hand to slightly graze his fingertips on his cheek.

Crowley felt his heart drop with a thud into the pavement and roll away. It landed somewhere under the booth for homemade salsa. “O-Oh,” he squeaked.

Aziraphale stared at him. Crowley stared back. Finally, the angel smiled, something shocked and happy and awed, as though Crowley had shown him Alpha Centauri, after all.

He couldn’t do this anymore.

Crowley closed the distance, three small steps for a demon, and one big leap for a demon and an angel alike, and Crowley kissed Aziraphale in the middle of the road at a dusty farmer’s market on a hot summer day _with people around,_ and he didn’t even care because all there was, was Aziraphale.

It was chaste and hardly lasted but a few seconds, but Crowley drew away, breathless, nonetheless. His heartbeat was tripled, hands cradling Aziraphale’s face, and he waited for the panic to set in, the claw of his hesitance to grip him and tear him open, for _something._

He waited, and it didn’t come, so he kissed Aziraphale again a little longer.

When their lips separated this time, Crowley pressed their foreheads together and kept his eyes closed, breathing softly and feeling Aziraphale’s warm puffs of air against his lips and chin and vaguely on his neck. It was so much. And it was good.

It was Aziraphale, whose hands had found themselves bracketing the demon’s shoulders, who spoke first. “Crowley,” he whispered, “you have always been worth it, you know.”

A demon could only take so much. He drew away and opened his eyes, filtering sunlight through shades that thankfully hid his fully golden eyes. He was utterly unprepared for the image of a blissful, kissed Aziraphale, glowing with so much holy joy any other demon would’ve burnt up on principle.

“It’s too hot out here,” Crowley deflected obviously, voice gravelly with too many feelings as he looked away. “Let’s get some iced coffee or something, yeah? A croissant?”

“That sounds perfect.” Aziraphale took the non sequitur in stride, perhaps understanding that the demon needed the change of subject. One step at a time, they would get there, to a point where this felt completely normal, and perhaps one day, it wouldn’t overwhelm Crowley so much to know he was loved in this way, and that he was shown it and could show it.

Or maybe he would never get used to it. Maybe he would always drown in Aziraphale’s love, and in how much he loved I return. How much he _could_ love.

Nonetheless, Crowley stepped back and held out his hand to Aziraphale. He reached out, he let himself reach out, and Aziraphale took it.

**Author's Note:**

> To conclude. Am soft  
> This was rather hard to write and I’ve been making minor and major edits for over two weeks now. I have a number of things going on with Crowley’s psychology here and I really wanted to get it right! I hope I did and that it all made sense and felt natural!  
> (Hope you like that I upped the poeticism a bit, I’ve missed being a theatrical loser who compares feelings to the cosmos)


End file.
